The Kingdom of God
Dear Friends,
Alarming things are going on in the US and in the world: war, climate events, food insecurity, the rise of totalitarianism of all kinds, and a host of other devastating ills. In our group work, we can seem distant from these when, like today, we do not specifically concentrate on the problems at large. Yet the best way forward for humanity and the planet has to include a change in our inner climate and a peace established with all the realms of the earth, visible and invisible. It will include a change in our sense of self and other, or all our (necessary!) outward efforts will be short-term and incomplete.
In the sight of approaching death, people often find life newly precious. I was touched yesterday to listen (thanks, LP!) to a podcast in which an old colleague of mine and his wife talk about how they face his approaching death together. One of the lessons they had to share with everyone listening was to tell the people you love that you love them. They specifically recommend saying it twice.
It is so very human that this most physical and spiritual act, dying, makes us long to express our love for being here, on earth. Some religions can seem to draw us away from the earth, as if it were better elsewhere, as if elsewhere or later were also "higher." I'll never forget Steven Levine, however, the Buddhist death-and-dying teacher, when he said so forcefully one day that a Zen master wants to be born on earth every instant, constantly arriving.
If one aspect of taking the lesson of life's brevity is to more fully appreciate the people here, another would be to heighten our love and gratitude for the other, non-human population of this place. That could embrace the animal world, the plant world, the mineral world (with its air and water and stone), and the human-constructed world, but also the subtle or energetic elements of life.
To some, subtle experiences appear in the form of beings, such as nature spirits. For others, these experiences are more, well, subtle, and register in our awareness as intensities or impulses or unusual senses of connection. In addition, there are intensities and beings that may have never been characterized in religion or mythology, but that we can very well encounter or create, and they too are part of this earth. They too are part of what we leave behind, or at any rate lose as we have them now, when we cross the threshold of death. To a non-dual awareness, our world is teeming with life beyond biological life, and our awareness of this life is itself alive.
In the Torah and other Jewish scriptures, as in Christianity, there is a longed-for possibility: the kingdom of God. In our time, this is easy to misunderstand or use in harmful ways. It is clear from the ancient texts, though, that the kingdom is not about a far-away being who would tell us what to do and have dominance over us. Remember that "God," in Germanic languages like English, comes from a root that means "pour," as in the constant pouring or gushing forth of reality. And what's translated as "the LORD" in the Bible is, in the original Hebrew, the I AM, the principle of being itself, the "generative mystery" in Spangler's phrase.
A different take on the kingdom of God, perhaps more in line with the primal inspiration of the term, has more to do with inclusiveness itself: the idea that all beings involved with the earth participate in an increasing sacredness, and can not only love one another, be thankful for one another, and have compassion for one another, but actively collaborate and create together. Luke 17:21: Neither shall they say lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is among you.
Today at 11 am we'll discuss and experience what lives among us all. As so often, we'll be guided for a part of our time by a Lorian exercise that evokes the sacred presence of ourselves and our nearby surround.
wishing you joy,
Michael
